Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/493

 THE STORY OF THE HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 481

shall devote myself for the rest of my life to showing that there is a living God in nature, and that the God of nature is one and the same with the God of the Bible. Life for him was a growing revelation of God. One night in his last illness his daughter heard him exclaim, How beautiful God is !

Hymn 952. O Thou through suffering perfect made.

WILLIAM WALSHAM How, D.D. (177).

Hospitals, S.P.C.K. Church Hymns, 1871.

Hymn~_Q53. Thine arm, O Lord, in days of old. EDWARD HAYES PLUMPTRE, D.D.

Written in 1864 for use in King s College Hospital, and printed on a fly-sheet for use in the hospital chapel. It was included in Lazarus, and other Poems, 2nd edition, 1865, and in the 1868 Appendix to Hymns Ancient and Modern.

Dean Plumptre was born in London in 1821. He became Fellow of Brasenose, Oxford ; Professor at King s College, London ; Prebendary of St. Paul s, 1863 ; Dean of Wells, 1881 ; member of the Old Testament Revision Company. His sacred poetry is full of thought and music, and his hymns have both fervour and stately simplicity. His Life of Bishop Ken, 1888, is a fruit of his residence in Wells. He died in 1891.

His fine processional hymn, Rejoice, ye pure in heart, was written for the annual festival of the Peterborough Choral Union in 1865.

Hymn 954. O Thou, whose chosen place of birth. W. S. PETERSON.

The hymn was used by the Rev. W. Garrett Ilorder in Congregational Jjymns, 1884. He thinks that Mr. Peterson was of Norwegian origin.

Ver. 3, In holy league, O Lord, we seek, was written by Mrs. Armitage at the request of Mr. Hordcr, as the third verse of the original seemed weak.

Hymn 955. O Thou before whose presence. SAMUEL JOHN STONE, M.A. (356).

A fine temperance hymn.

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